


A Sticky Situation

by orphan_account



Category: Black Books
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:38:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a very good reason Black Books fails at keeping neighbours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sticky Situation

_WHUMP_

_CREE-E-E-E-E-E-EEE-E-K_

_THU-THU-THU-THU-THUNK_

Goliath Books had relocated after two months, tearing through the terms of their lease and getting as far from that lot, as far from Russell Square as possible. During this time, Black Books had enjoyed a blissful five months before the space had been rented again. The new tenant had mercifully decided to leave the space as it was, and hadn’t called in any renovators or builders, but after a fortnight, the strain was already beginning to show.

Not in Black Books, the neighbour of a new shop called This ‘n’ That, which apparently sold every sort of everything under the sun, but rather in This ‘n’ That itself. The shop’s owner, a small-ish, timid chap, had been taking inventory after closing when the noises started.

At first, he paid it no mind. This area of London had some fairly old buildings, and it was easy to assume that the noises were just the pipes or foundation setting after a particularly hot London day.

But no amount of foundation or pipe-setting would cause the walls to bleed. Dark red, viscous, and full of coagulated bits, it oozed and crept from the join of one of the walls and the ceiling.

The shop owner dropped his clipboard and ran, not even remembering to lock up. As he ran screaming from the shop, he came within micrometres of colliding with a tall, scarecrow-thin woman who walked down the street.

“Oy, watch where you’re going, you... person!” Fran shouted after him.

She pushed her way into Black Books, careful to dodge around the family of moles who had taken up camp under the table, and ducked just in time to avoid a flying grapefruit (the arrival of said fruit being announced by someone shouting, “Grapefruit’s not working!” only moments before).

“Fran!” Manny called as he rushed out from behind the curtain that separated the shop proper from the sitting room. "It’s Bernard! Come quick!”

“Your new neighbour’s a right arsehole,” Fran mentioned casually as she twisted herself around mountains of books, the sticky bit of the floor, and the cat trap. “Ran right into me, and didn’t even say sorry or anything.”

She and Manny found Bernard in the sitting room with a jar of jam stuck on one of his hands, and a hammer in the other. He held the jam-jar hand on the counter, and was wielding the hammer far above his head.

“Bernard, wait!” Manny said, rushing up to him. “Here.”

Manny pushed his wallet into Bernard’s mouth and nodded.

“Right,” Bernard said from behind the worn leather. “Stand back.”

Heaving a sigh, Fran pulled a bottle of wine from her over-sized handbag and held it out for Bernard to see. He caught it just out of his peripheral, and his eyes practically glazed over right then and there. Dropping the hammer to the floor, he let Manny’s wallet fall out of his mouth and let go of the bit of toast he’d dropped into the jam jar by accident, and on which he had hitherto maintained a death grip, allowing his hand to easily slide out of the jar.

“I think your new neighbour’s moving out,” Fran announced as Bernard took the bottle of wine.

“Good,” said Bernard as he fetched up three glasses. “I didn’t like him, anyway. He smelt of carrots.”

Manny, meanwhile, had become distracted by the piece of toast in the jam jar and had reached to pull it out, only to rather alarmingly find his hand stuck.

The next morning, the three of them were all slumped over Bernard’s desk, awoken sharply by the sound of the jam jar slipping from Manny’s hand and hitting the floor. The three of them jolted into something resembling a vertical position, letting out rather startled barks. As they all managed to get their wits about them, they were again startled by the sound of the front door opening, admitting the shop owner from next door.

“Excuse me?” he called timidly.

Bernard gave him a look that could have frozen the equatorial regions of Africa.

“What do you want? Go away,” he snapped.

The man who smelt of carrots jumped slightly. “Oh, uh. I’m sorry,” he stammered, his accent sounding like something near Bristol. “I was just, well. I was wondering how long you’ve been here, and if you know if there’s anything, uhm... _wrong_ with these buildings?”

“Oh, yes,” Fran said, nodding. “Next door is haunted. Quite badly, I’m afraid. I’m surprised you weren’t told when you signed the leasing agreement.”

“Uhm, well. I was,” admitted the man who smelt of carrots. “But, I thought it was just one of those things, you know. A sort of thing some places will claim because it makes it more famous.”

“Nope,” said Fran, her voice downright clinical. “Haunted. They’ve had exorcists and paranormal investigators in there and everything. Nothing seems to make any difference.”

Bernard cocked his head curiously. “You never said that building was haunted,” he said, sounding more curious than disbelieving.

“That’s why I sued the building owner, remember,” Fran said. “He never told me when I opened my shop.”

Bernard nodded distantly. “Oh, right,” he said, reaching into one of his desk drawers and pulling out half an eaten Jaffa Cake. He ate the remaining half. “You said your solicitor had a nice arse.”

Fran just wrinkled her nose as she tried to hide her smile.

The man who smelt of carrots looked disbelievingly between the two of them. “This is all normal, then?” he asked.

Fran shrugged as though she wasn’t really sure. “You should be fine. I think only one person has been seriously injured over there, when the entire electrical system malfunctioned and a security camera fell on him.”

Manny and Bernard both huffed, irritated to even have to think about that particular week of their lives.

A week later, This ‘n’ That had closed and relocated.

The next tenant to occupy the space was a small restaurant, specialising mostly in toasted sandwiches. Bernard declared one day, about a week after the restaurant had opened, that they were going over there for lunch. He had decided this after his own attempt to make something had ended in the tea kettle exploding into wild shrapnel and the stove began jerking and jolting like a off-balance washing machine on the spin cycle.

He led Fran and Manny out of the shop and to the restaurant, finding that the entire place was being cleared out rather abruptly. When they got inside the restaurant, they hardly noticed the upturned chairs, bleeding wall, or the sound of a woman in hysterics seeming to come from somewhere near the kitchen.

They sat there at the table for a full twenty minutes, waiting as politely as possible (which involved stealing drinks and food from nearby tables) for a waiter.

“Service in this dive is shit,” declared Bernard as he stood up. “Let’s go to the pub instead.”

It was another six months before someone else moved into the space, this time trying to sell expensive coats and hats. They managed to last a full month before the blood and sounds of death and dying drove them away.

Soon after, a notice was delivered to Black Books, announcing that the building next to them would be torn down, apparently in the hopes that knocking the whole thing out and rebuilding would get rid of the apparently pissed off ghost that now haunted the space.

The notice never did make it to Bernard, though, as it had been taped to the door, and after a bit of jostling from would-be customers, had fallen to the floor where the family of moles had turned it into a rather comfortable attachment to their home.

As a result, the sound of builders next door had come as quite a shock to Bernard and Manny. The sound of hammers coming from the other side of the wall had triggered violent flashbacks in Manny, who dived down the stairs to the sitting room and started throwing spoons in all directions. He was followed by Bernard, his face full of rage and with a large sledgehammer over his shoulder.

“How! Do you! Like it!?” he shouted as he walked to the wall that sat against the building that was in the process of being torn down.

Like a man possessed, he began swinging the hammer at the wall, taking out large chunks of shelving and plaster.

“You try to sleep until midday with this racket!” he shouted.

He continued to swing, working farther and farther up the wall with each blow, until his hammer struck something glass. Just then, viscous liquid that was so red it looked almost black started pouring from the wall, followed shortly after by several dozen heavy glass jars.

Bernard jumped away from this and dropped his sledgehammer.

“Manny!” he shouted. “I’ve found the rest of the jam. Fetch me some toast!”

He sat down on his desk, not noticing the screaming that came from the builders next door as they all ran out into the street.

  



End file.
